I know that this seems like a no brainer, but I cannot stress that if you have access to a parent of a young child it is important to convey that talking and interacting with their child as much as possible is crucial for their development. Despite all the pressures and stresses that we endure to make ends meet financially. We should be reminded that cultivating shared time and activity with our children can help fuel our energies and be renewed to take on the difficult tasks that face us daily.

Anne Fernald is an American psychologist, the Josephine Knotts Knowles Professor in Human Biology at Stanford University,[1] and has been described as “the leading researcher in infant-directed speech”.[2]

Fernald specializes in children’s language development, investigating the development of speed and efficiency in children’s early comprehension in relation to their emerging lexical and grammatical competence. Recently, she has also begun to study language development in bilingual Spanish-English speaking children and children who are learning Spanish in addition to English. Her research has shown that infants prefer baby talk to adult speech and that it plays an important role in their language development,[3]and that baby talk has universal features that span multiple cultures and languages.[4][5] She has also studied the effects of television on infants, showing that young TV viewers echo the emotional responses of the actors they see.[6][7]

Fernald received a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Oregon in 1982,[8] where she studied under the mentorship of Patricia K. Kuhl. As well as her position as a psychology professor, Fernald has taken an administrative role at Stanford as Vice Provost for Faculty Development.[9] Her husband, Russell Fernald, is the Benjamin Scott Crocker Professor in Human Biology at Stanford. Source

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I have to share that when I walk my kids in the stroller on the weekend, I habitually listen to Krista Tippet interviewer extraordinaire. She picks topics that keep my head swimming in possibilities. This week she interviewed Rex Jung on Creativity. I think that this is really relevant for educators and especially School Psychologist who are constantly having to measure children’s potential in a variety of areas.

*One thing I did not like during the interview was the use of the word “Retarded”. I think that they should have been savvy enough to use the more modern, respectful, accurate descriptor of “Intellectual Disability”. UPDATE: I emailed Rex Jung about this terminology and he promptly responded, saying he wishes that we could do away with all labels. I agree with him and think he has his heart in the right place when it comes to people in general.

is an Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He’s a Distinguished Senior Advisor to the Positive Neuroscience Project, based at the University of Pennsylvania.

Krista Tippett from On Being interviews Mike Rose on intelligence across all professions and how the measures and cultural perceptions we currently have on intelligence might be too narrow.

MIKE ROSE is a research professor in the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. He’s the author of several books, including The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker, Why School?: Reclaiming Education for All of Us, and more recentlyBack to School: Why Everyone Deserves a Second Chance at Education.